I had a great time learning from so many Docassemble users at Docacon 2018 this past week. I think they will be put up on the Docacon website soon, but I wanted to share my slides just in case. I’m planning to blog in more detail some of the topics Read more…
I spent the week at Suffolk Law School’s Clinnnovation conference, followed by a great summit where we discussed how to train the next generation of lawyers to code. Imagining a group of excited new coders made me think about the risks and benefits of coding that we might not have Read more…
One of the most helpful features of Microsoft System Center is the ability to centrally manage updates. Yet System Center doesn’t include a way to manage third party updates natively. That’s where System Center Updates Publisher has come in. It’s a system that has always had more promise than it Read more…
Quick post before the Vermont Law School legal technology conference: Rina Padua and I put together a comprehensive tutorial for Docassemble to help someone new get started with document assembly. It’s a great example that shows how a lawyer can use document assembly to mirror legal rules but it will Read more…
Here’s a task that I thought would be completely straightforward, but took me down a long rabbit hole of failed attempts: adding the 47 towns and cities Greater Boston Legal Services serves onto a custom Google Map that displays the border outlines of each city. The final method was simple, Read more…
I am working on a project to develop a guided interview for tenants who are facing eviction. Briefly, a guided interview is a TurboTax-like interface that asks a user questions and drafts a letter, form, or pleading that might be printed out or electronically filed with a court. This is Read more…
The HotDocs Component Generator for Google Sheets is now available in the Chrome Web Store. This is an evolution of a few techniques I’ve discussed on this blog that is more user friendly than PowerShell and doesn’t require you to learn JavaScript. Read more about it here: http://nonprofittechy.com/projects/hotdocs-computation-generator/.
Without true automation, guided interviews that produce legal forms are too difficult to justify the learning curve. As I have stated on this blog before, I am working on updating the Greater Boston Legal Services Eviction Defense System, a tool that helps lawyers and nonlawyer advocates complete legal forms for Read more…
Do you maintain Hotdocs guided interviews on LHI? Here’s one way to keep a Hotdocs guided interview up to date: use a Google Form to let users across the jurisdiction submit updates to a spreadsheet, and then use Google Apps Script to generate a Hotdocs computation from the user submissions. The computation Read more…
The maximum amount a single person can earn and still qualify for free legal help is just over $15,000 a year, and for a family of four that increases to only $30,000 a year. With a few exceptions, someone making $16,000 is on their own. Even if you do earn Read more…